weird Tyler Matzek factoid of the day:

[DocJJ]

He does all of his daily activities (writing, eating, etc.) with his right hand. But pitches with his left.

How strange....

[crawdad]

Originally Posted by DocJJ

He does all of his daily activities (writing, eating, etc.) with his right hand. But pitches with his left.

How strange....

He is the Celine Dion of baseball.

[QBsILLEST1]

Sounds to me like dad wanted him to be a pitcher from day 1. I am trying to do that with my son now. He is 10 months old, but I am teaching him to throw stuff with his left hand but he does normal stuff like walk around holding his bottle with his right hand.....

You can make it to the Bigs easier as a left handed pitcher than a righty.....

[crawdad]

Originally Posted by QBsILLEST1

Sounds to me like dad wanted him to be a pitcher from day 1. I am trying to do that with my son now. He is 10 months old, but I am teaching him to throw stuff with his left hand but he does normal stuff like walk around holding his bottle with his right hand.....

You can make it to the Bigs easier as a left handed pitcher than a righty.....

Based on my rudimentary understanding of human physiology. You really should not change hands. Handed activities typically are best done with the dominant hand. It is a brain thing. You can probably find a lot of studies from the mid 1950s on adults who were forced to be right handed because left handedness was considered the work of the devil.

Batting sides are not handed.

So, instead of having him be a left handed pitcher. Have him be a right handed catcher who is a switch hitter or bats from the left side.

[ScottieBaseball]

Originally Posted by QBsILLEST1

Sounds to me like dad wanted him to be a pitcher from day 1. I am trying to do that with my son now. He is 10 months old, but I am teaching him to throw stuff with his left hand but he does normal stuff like walk around holding his bottle with his right hand.....

You can make it to the Bigs easier as a left handed pitcher than a righty.....

You're joking right? You're not really grooming a 10-month old to be a big league pitcher, are you?

No way I'd start earlier than 14 months. Maybe that's just me.

[ChaosLex]

We'll have to check back in 20 years and see who's taken higher in the draft.

QBsILLEST1's son or ScottieBaseball's son.

[allstar1579]

Originally Posted by QBsILLEST1

Sounds to me like dad wanted him to be a pitcher from day 1. I am trying to do that with my son now. He is 10 months old, but I am teaching him to throw stuff with his left hand but he does normal stuff like walk around holding his bottle with his right hand.....

You can make it to the Bigs easier as a left handed pitcher than a righty.....

You really don't want to try to fight the hardwiring of the brain. Everyone has a dominant hand, some people just seem to able to do almost as much with their secondary hand (ambidextrous), trying to change someone's dominant hand isn't going to work, and is just going to cause confusion later in development, especially if you are starting this early. Look for his signs on which hand is dominant, encourage that one, but feel free to see if he can use the alternate one as well, a lot more people are ambidextrous than you think, they just never take the time to learn with the alternate hand because they favor the dominant.

It's not the baseball development I worry about, but when it comes time to write, or tie shoes, or button clothes, and they are trying to use the not as dominant hand and taking longer to learn it could breed confusion and dejection and lead to lower self confidence which is hard to undo. I've seen people try to do exactly what you are trying and it led to serious problems when the kid was 8 years old and still didn't know what hand was dominant.

Keep in mind I'm saying this as someone that studied the brain in college, not as a baseball fan or scout.

[tywright]

Jordan Zimmermann writes left handed, but throws right handed.

"I don't know, that's the way I was born to write," Zimmermann explained. He bats and throws right-handed, and in fact does everything right-handed except for two things: he writes left-handed, and he kicks left-handed. Yes, he used to be the punter and place-kicker for his high-school football team, once converting a 27-yard year old field goal try. His father also writes left-handed and does all else with the right. It's unclear how his father would kick field goals.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/dcs...ight.html#more

[ScottieBaseball]

Originally Posted by tywright

Jordan Zimmermann writes left handed, but throws right handed.

My son writes right-handed and throws left-handed.

[QBsILLEST1]

Originally Posted by allstar1579

You really don't want to try to fight the hardwiring of the brain. Everyone has a dominant hand, some people just seem to able to do almost as much with their secondary hand (ambidextrous), trying to change someone's dominant hand isn't going to work, and is just going to cause confusion later in development, especially if you are starting this early. Look for his signs on which hand is dominant, encourage that one, but feel free to see if he can use the alternate one as well, a lot more people are ambidextrous than you think, they just never take the time to learn with the alternate hand because they favor the dominant.

It's not the baseball development I worry about, but when it comes time to write, or tie shoes, or button clothes, and they are trying to use the not as dominant hand and taking longer to learn it could breed confusion and dejection and lead to lower self confidence which is hard to undo. I've seen people try to do exactly what you are trying and it led to serious problems when the kid was 8 years old and still didn't know what hand was dominant.

Keep in mind I'm saying this as someone that studied the brain in college, not as a baseball fan or scout.

Thats makes a lot of sense. And I guess if I do try to have him throwing lefthanded, he may not be able to do it as well as he would out of his right(dominant) hand. But like I said, what you said makes a lot of sense. The last thing I want to do is have him have low self esteem due to him not learning to use the dominant hand correctly.

As for the teaching my son to throw at 10 months.....Me personally I am not sticking baseballs in his hand and putting him in my back yard where there is a mound set up still from me practicing pitching and telling him to throw. I just give him wiffle balls and he throws them. More often he throws it with the right hand, but he throws it left from time to time as well. He also carries a baseball with him when we go places. But I am not worried about him being too young, he started walking right around 8 months, and soon afterwards I gave him a wiffle ball to play with and taught him how to throw it, now he throws everything, which is another potential problem because he may throw everything that he gets in his hands as he gets older.

But none the less.....don't worry I wont teach him to throw a curve until he is 13

[allstar1579]

Originally Posted by ScottieBaseball

My son writes right-handed and throws left-handed.

Ambidextrous kids have an easier time switch hitting too since their brain is wired for receptors from both sides, you should experiment with that.

[Hutman]

Originally Posted by ScottieBaseball

My son writes right-handed and throws left-handed.

I write left handed and throw right handed, not that I ever had a career as a MLB pitcher. I never made it out of Little League.

[Lucky Jim]

Originally Posted by ScottieBaseball

My son writes right-handed and throws left-handed.

So do I. Hit and throw lefty. Golf lefty. Kick righty. Write righty. Eat righty. Play tennis righty.

I'm all over the place.

[jerios55]

Originally Posted by tywright

Jordan Zimmermann writes left handed, but throws right handed.



http://voices.washingtonpost.com/dcs...ight.html#more

He kicks left-handed Wouldn't that be impressive.